Moussa Mara

Moussa MARA was born on March 2, 1975. He is 49 years old in this year 2023. His father, Joseph, a career soldier, was Minister of Justice of Mali in the 1970s and a member of the Military Committee of National Liberation, the highest instance management of the country. He also served as mayor of the town the garrison of Kati. His mother, Kadiatou LY, comes from the big prosperous Peulh and Soninké families in the western Sahel whose main activity is trade. Moussa MARA had a well-to-do childhood and was able to finish higher accounting and financial studies in prestigious French institutions. He graduated as a Certified Public Accountant at the age of 25, becoming the youngest Certified Public Accountant in the history of his country. He joined the accounting firm (Société d’Expertise Comptable) DIARRA in 1997 and became its director two years later at age of 24. For 15 years, he raised this auditing and consulting company among the most important of his field in French-speaking Africa. He is an associate of this international firm, consultant of several Governments, active in 15 African countries through subsidiaries and partners and which occupies a leading position in Mali and in West Africa. His professional life was successful during the 2000’s. Moussa MARA served as Secretary General of the Order of Certified Public Accountants of Mali for 5 years. The youngest to this function too. He was a member of the National Accounting Council, Vice President of the West African Accounting Council (at the age of 32) and a member of the French speaking accounting standardization council of 17 countries.

He has been professor of higher education in faculties and institutions in Mali, Senegal, Benin and Cameroon. Between 2007 and 2012, he served as Chief Executive Officer of the Graduate School of Management, a university preparing the accounting degree. Moussa MARA engaged in Politics first at the local level to build a local approach, meet the most concrete expectations of populations and prove it in this area before aspiring to national responsibilities. He animated many local associations and youth awakening in his neighborhood in Bamako from 1999, which led him, however independent and non-partisan candidate, to become mayor of the commune IV of Bamako ten years later at the age of 34 years old, becoming the youngest mayor of a large Malian town (600 000 inhabitants). This function allowed Mr MARA to carry out some of the ideas he developed in his writings, thus giving substance to results-based management, transparency on public acts, the association of people to the decisions that concern them and the organization of communities at the exclusive service of citizens. His action at the head of this town hall was hailed by the whole country and earned him a significant reputation with the quotation of this municipality by the majority of Malians, partners of Mali and national authorities, as a model of its kind. MARA proceeded, as mayor, to the regular declaration of his patrimony, without the law obliging him to do so.

Throughout the history of Mali, he is still the only public responsible for this act. The action of Moussa MARA at the head of commune IV of Bamako, earned him the solicitation of President Ibrahim Boubacar KEITA, elected in September 2013, to enter his government while he is not in his party. Moussa MARA thus occupied the post of Minister in charge of urban planning and the City, to echo his brilliant record of Mayor. His action at the head of this department, in a country in accelerated urbanization, gave satisfaction to the Head of State who proposed to him, seven months later, in April 2014, the post of Prime Minister of Mali, at the age aged 39, which made him the youngest head of government in the history of Mali. 2 At the head of the government team, MARA will try to reconnect with its methods of governance at the service of the people. He had each Minister sign a performance contract that was regularly evaluated. It accelerated the operation of the administration to produce results faster. It will increase transparency on the recruitment of senior officials, appointments to responsibilities and public procurement. He engaged in an arduous hunting against waste and sumptuary expenses. Under the governance of Moussa MARA, government activities began very early in the morning and ended late in the evening to better meet the many aspirations of Malians. When he left the government in January 2015, Moussa MARA devoted himself to his young party, YELEMA the change, created in 2010 and engaged charitable and reflective actions at the head of foundation and think Tank while continuing his profession of Certified Public Accountant. The Malian Foundation for Mutual Aid and Development (FMED), which it runs, is one of the most dynamic in the country. It carries out humanitarian and support actions in all regions of the country. As for the Think Tank, the center of study and reflection in Mali (CERM) of which it is one of the founders, it is the most productive in Mali and already benefits from important partnerships outside the country, on other continents. Reflection is indispensable for political action.

MARA, despite his young age and the important responsibilities already occupied, has already published six books as well as hundreds of articles on the major challenges facing Mali and Africa (education, state building, security, youth ...).He is to this day the politician having to his credit the greatest number of works of the Malian history! This intense intellectual activity has enabled him to lead conferences, to participate in high-level panels and to intervene in international structures dedicated to thought, in Africa, in Europe or in America. For the past four years, Moussa MARA has traveled to Mali several times, visiting more than 200 communes in the country and some 50 countries from four continents to meet his compatriots and continuing to analyze their expectations in order to serve them better when the times comes.. He did not run in the presidential elections of 2018 but supported a candidate who was ranked 4th out of 24 candidates, achieving his best score, second place in Bamako, the capital which is the electoral stronghold of MARA. In his approach of methodical conquest of the Power (in the manner of a Certified Public Accountant), Moussa MARA sets itself as an objective, the conquest of the mayor of Bamako in 2019. Bamako is Mali's main city and presents important challenges in terms of safety, sanitation, vocational training, mobility, digitalization, satisfaction of young people's expectations, increased urban incomes, management of urban space and anticipating the fallout of climate issues. There are many challenges and opportunities for any investor looking to open new borders in Africa.

MARA intends to modernize the city of Bamako and turn it into a city of the 21st century to open interesting prospects for its inhabitants who now represent a quarter of the Malian population. Opinion polls in Bamako have always given MARA a popular support of over 70%, especially among young people, the majority of its citizens. Moussa MARA, married with five children, is opening a new chapter in his life. He has been elected as Parlementary this year 2020. This chapter is planed to lead him to the doors of the State power, in the coming years.

He mobilizes his party, the sixth in the country in number of local elected officials, but also its many supporters in Mali and abroad to help realize a great design for this country and for Africa. Africa needs honest leaders, competent, organized, rigorous, and patriotic without being nationalistic, open to the world without disregarding its roots and history, in tune with the aspirations of its population and especially its youth, to give itself a new future. Moussa MARA intends to embody that in Mali!